




^/ T ^f. TunK.'n 



62d Congress \ 
3d Session J 



SENATE 



f Document 
\ No. 983 



IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE 
GOVERNMENT IM- 
PERILED? 



FRANCIS T. A. JUNKIN, A. M., LL. B. 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE 

EIGHTY-FOURTH COMMENCEMENT 

OF KENYON COLLEGE, 

JUNE 17, 1912 



PRESENTED BY MR. SUTHERLAND 
DECEMBER 17, 1912.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1912 



4> 




If, *■'■• "■■ 
fEG 3^ *912 



IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED? 



Fellow Alumni, Ladies and Gentlemen: More than a quarter 
of a century ago I stood upon this rostrum as a member of the gradu- 
ating class, and with all the ardor of youth discussed before an audi- 
ence much like this a period in the history of our country that con- 
tained in it greater peril and danger than the Republic had known. 
The great struggle between the North and the South was imagined 
by the European world to mark the end of a splendid but vain at- 
tempt to found a new form of government for freemen. The expecta- 
tions of the world were not realized. That stupendous conflict 
brought a peril to the Union that was extreme, but at no time did it 
threaten the fundamental principles of civil and political liberty 
which were embodied by the founders of representative republican 
government in our Constitution. Those principles, even though the 
Union had been disrupted, would not have perished from the face of 
the earth; they found equal lodgment in the constitution of the Con- 
federate States and in the hearts and minds of the whole American 
people. Each of the unions of States that might have resulted from 
a disruption of the original Union would have preserved in its consti- 
tution the same safeguards to civil and political liberty that distin- 
guishes the Constitution of their fathers. 

But to-day we could not speak with such confidence. While the 
South still stands firmly on the foundations laid by our founders, 
other parts of our land are not so conservative. Even as we speak, 
powerful and influential forces are at work, which, in the judgment 
of many, are undermining our fundamental laws and preparing for 
our pepple perils of which they do not dream and which few of them 
are able to understand. These perils, if real, are graver than any 
that have heretofore threatened our form of government, our happi- 
ness, and our orderly safety under law. It is of these perils that I 
would speak to you to-day. 

In the last analysis, ignorance and selfishness are the supreme and 
only enemies to human happiness and human order. If only we 
could, as in the ancient gathering of the hundred, in Old England, or 
in the later town meeting of New England, gather all of our hundred 
million countrymen under one wise voice at one time, and make them 
see and know the truth, that truth in its mightiness would prevail; 
that truth would make and keep them free; their eyes would be 
opened to an understanding of the means by which the civilization 
of the world has been won ; the lessons of history would be understood 
and applied; and the voice of the demagogue and the self-seeker 
would no longer be heard in the land. 

But a town meeting of a hundred million people can not be held. 
These two arch enemies to good government must in our diverse and 
widely scattered population be met in other ways; ignorance by in- 
tellectual education; selfishness by moral education. Therefore, to 
you men of learning — you men of the college and the seminary, 
young and old — I bring to-day an appeal of patriotism. 



4 IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 

It is a note of alarm that I desire to sound. Our Constitution is in 
danger and as a Nation we do not know it. Even those of us who 
think are inclined to treat lightly the suggestion that any danger can 
come to our well-founded liberties in America. With our American 
optimism we find it difficult to believe that fundamental and de- 
structive changes in our form of government are imminent. We put 
aside as impossible the suggestion that the present order, established 
by our fathers, can be overthrown. "Why," we say, "if any man 
should try to override our fundamental laws, the people would rise in 
their might." It is true, they may rise in their might, but they may 
rise to follow men who are boldly advocating doctrines that are as 
the ax at the very root of our representative government. Our chief 
peril lies in the fact that we seem unaware of this truth. Let him 
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. The old wares, 
under the name of "New nationalism" now being hawked for votes 
in the political market by men of power and influence, would inevit- 
ably lead to a fundamental change of our form of government — a 
change from a representative republic to a socialistic democracy. 
A democracy like that of the ancient Greeks, who, being unprotected 
from their own enthusiasms, emotions, and ephemeral passions by 
those wise restraints and balances conceived and adopted by our 
founders, often "rose in their might" and rushed headlong in their 
ignorance, as their demagogues and their passions led, until after a 
brief career, wonderful Greece, resplendent in every art but that of 
government, plunged to its death. 

When I was a student in these halls there occurred an event that 
shook your State to its very foundations and compelled your gov- 
ernor to call upon the soldiers of the Republic for aid and protection 
against its own citizens. In your chief city there had been growing 
a popular indignation against the corruption of the political gang- 
sters and bosses. Finally it was believed by the people that the 
very courts themselves had become venal. When at last a notorious 
criminal was let off easy, escaping what the popular mind deemed 
adequate and just punishment for his crimes, a wave of indignation 
swept into the great music hall of that city a concourse of citizens 
such as had never gathered there before. They met for the purpose 
of denouncing the evils and determining what had best be done. 
One after another leading citizens — editors, ministers of the Gospel, 
lawyers, and business men — denounced the outrage and aroused to 
flame the passions of this mass of men. A committee was appointed 
to devise and report a course of procedure and the meeting adjourned; 
but as the great audience poured into the streets it did not scatter. 
The fire was in its veins. It could not wait for calm and orderly pro- 
cedure; its passions had been aroused to the acting point. The cry 
arose, "Cn to the jail!" and the crowd surged thither. A stone was 
cast, and another. Within a few moments telegraph poles were 
razed and were battering in the. gates and doors of the jail in search 
of the criminal who was supposed to be yet there. In anger at their 
ineffectual efforts to find the criminal they sought, the mob freed all 
the inmates of the jail and then moved upon the courts. In the 
dead of night bonfires were piled and lighted in the venerable and 
historic courthouse. The frenzied mob refused to permit fire en- 
gines to extinguish the flames. Before morning the priceless records 
of a century had been irrecoverably destroyed. Like wildfire the riot 



IS OUK REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 5 

spread to every part of the city. The rioters were now governed by 
no reason. Seemingly they had no purpose but pillage and public 
defiance of law and order. The evil elements of the city were now 
in control. Stores and shops on every side were broken into and 
looted by mobs. Streets were torn up and barricades built, as in the 
days of the Commune in Paris. From behind these the mob defied 
the police and the State militia. At the end of two weeks the gov- 
ernor of the State was forced to call upon the Federal Government 
for aid and not until the United States troops, with Gatling gun and 
rifle, had attacked and captured and destroyed, one after another, 
the street redoubts of the mob and held the city under martial law, 
was order restored. 

Here was a movement originating in the highest and best elements 
of society, the sole purpose of which was the public welfare; the sole 
aim of which was to right great wrongs. Note how rapidly it degen- 
erated under the passions of the multitude into an intemperate and 
uncontrolled mob, in which law and order and the public welfare 
were forgotten. Note how the selfish arid evil man, the dangerous 
element of the community, saw quickly and took advantage of the 
opportunity it gave to advance selfish ends. 

Again — a few years ago — there began a movement in our country, 
founded at first in wisdom and justice, to right certain evil conditions 
that through years and through natural human competition had be- 
come identified with the life and management of great corporations. 
This movement, at first dignified and thoughtful, soon, under the 
intemperate speech of men, many of them well meaning, swelled into 
a great wave of more or less unintelligent public feeling that has 
swept the country from ocean to ocean. The popularity of this 
movement did not escape the self-seeking politician and he mounted 
its crest and rode into power. The newspaper lost no time or oppor- 
tunity in increasing the public clamor and incidentally its own circu- 
lation. The magazines and the weekly periodicals saw they were 
being left behind and girded up their loins. The field of the railroads 
and the trusts was soon harvested and the now thoroughly excited 
public passion looked for other fields of reform. Muckraking began. 
Cheap magazines multiplied and fed the passions of the multitude. 
Other victims must be found. All business was crooked. Every- 
body was bad. Everything that was was wrong. All must be re- 
formed. The laws were evil or ineffectual and should be disregarded. 
The courts were venal and should be abolished or recalled. Men 
must be made good — by law if possible, by force if necessary, but they 
must be made good. Eventually the whirlwind of the tempest was 
reached when the Chief Magistrate himself boldly disregarded or re- 
frained from enforcing the law that he had sworn to uphold, and, if 
we may judge from his angry and intemperate criticisms, would, if 
he had dared, have swept from its seat that supreme tribunal created 
under the Constitution as a check upon the powers of the executive 
and legislative branches of the Government. Out of this melee 
sprang up the cult of "new nationalism." 

In such crises the necessity becomes evident for a constitution that 
will save us from our own rash and ill-considered actions and protect 
us against usurpations of power by any branch of the Government. 

The curious notion is now generally and seemingly effectively 
preached by the politician that there exists somewhere and somehow 



D IS OUK REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 

an all-wise and beneficent entity, called "the people"— something 
different and opposite from individual human beings and free from 
their limitations and defects — and that this all-wise and beneficent 
entity will take care of us better than we can care for ourselves if 
only by electing the politician we will let him give this all-beneficent 
"the people" the opportunity. That this is sheer nonsense does not 
seem to interfere with its popularity. It gets the votes even though 
it is contradicted by history and repudiated by common sense. 
Human society is not and can never be anything more than the sum 
total of the individuals who compose it and can not possibly have 
excellencies of its own which are not found in the people themselves. 
The voice of the people has never been and can never be the all-wise 
voice of God. And yet to-day we see men of great power, men of 
undoubted intelligence, men of seeming sincerity, seeking to ride into 
power chiefly on this absurd doctrine, advocating as the method of 
giving the all- wise people an opportunity the initiative, the referen- 
dum, and the recall as a substitute for those fundamental and dia- 
metrically opposed principles which are the basis of representative 
government and are the chief distinction of the Constitution of the 
United States. 

We can not have the prominent men, or the most conspicuous 
men, or the most noteworthy men, or the most notorious men in the 
public life of a nation seriously proposing these fallacious doctrines 
without danger that is real and great. It is no longer possible to 
say that those fundamental guaranties of representative government 
are not really questioned or doubted. Every single one of them is 
questioned and doubted in this country. One State after another, 
with seeming lightness and frivolity and without understanding the 
purport of its action, has adopted into its fundamental law principles 
of the social democracy which are essentially opposed to representa- 
tive government. We may close our eyes if we like. We may with 
our American sense of security say, "It will all come out all right." 
Perhaps it will. I believe it will. But the fact remains that there 
are many of us who are convinced that the fundamental guaranties 
which underlie our whole National Government, and our Nation's 
life can not be destroyed — can not be attacked — can not even be 
made light of without serious danger to our entire political fabric. 
We must not awake to our danger too late. Eternal vigilance is 
the price of liberty. If the foundation crumbles we are gone. The 
first blow struck at the corner stone should awaken us to action. 
And yet we have witnessed blow after blow with seeming inaction; 
without any widespread and realizing protest. Consider but a few 
of them: 

The Attorney General of the United States, the chief law officer 
of the Nation, the head of the United States Department of Justice 
and a member of the President's Cabinet, has urged that the Govern- 
ment be intrusted with the power to fix the prices at which shall be 
bought and sold the principal articles that we make, eat, and wear. 
He proposes that the Government take possession of the industry of 
a nation of a hundred million souls. This means that the Govern- 
ment of the United States shall undertake what even medieval tyrants 
shrank from after trial. This means not merely social democracy. 
It means socialism, pure and simple. This is what Carl Marx has 
preached. This is what Bebel and Liebknecht in Germany never 



IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 

ventured to propose; what Jaures in France would shrink from as 
a practical measure; what the parliamentary socialists of England 
would scarcely dare to suggest in their official capacity. And yet 
the Attorney General of the United States, with all the influential 
force of his high office, urges it upon the people as if the American 
Republic were a crumbling shell and the days of liberty, the days 
of individual effort, the days of personal independence and of per- 
sonal rights were already fading away into the tyranny which bygone 
ages tried to reach but failed to realize. 

Again, we see a Senator of the United States associating himself 
with other Senators to bring about a recall of the Supreme Court 
judges when on the law and the evidence they render a decision which 
displeases the people, who have read neither the law nor the evidence. 

Again, we see a Senator of the United States associating himself with 
other Senators of the United States to debar — legally debar — the 
courts from pronouncing any act of Congress unconstitutional; that 
is, to allow Congress to abolish any or all of the Constitution ; to vote 
away by a bare majority of that body the constitutional safeguards 
against cruel and unusual punishment, against the confiscation of 
private property, against special class legislation, exempting some 
and disabling others, and so on back to the erasure of the Bill of 
Rights, the Magna Charta, and every other measure of what has been 
considered right, justice, equity, and safeguard for the citizen, his 
life and his property, since there has been an English language. 
*< This clamor has produced results. We have recently seen the 
people of California and Arizona adopt without due consideration 
doctrines which, when examined in the light of reason and history, 
can not fail to be recognized as subversive of representative govern- 
ment. But the people in those States seem not to have examined 
these doctrines in the light of reason and history, or in any other 
light, because, as I say, they have acted without due consideration. 
They have accepted the mere statement that here was something 
new and up to date and therefore good; that here was something 
which would be a preventive of all the fancied wickedness which, it 
is claimed, permeates and controls our people and our country. Take 
California, for instance. The vote which adopted 23 or 24 amencfc- 
ments to the constitution of that State, including the referendum, 
the initiative, and the recall, was adopted by a startlingly small minor- 
ity of the people. The aggregate vote did not approach in magnitude 
the vote of a presidential year. The people treated the matter of 
adopting fundamental changes in their form of government lightly. 
They did not realize that they were fundamental changes. They did 
not see their application in history, and so California adopted the 
initiative, the referendum, and the recall, including the recall of 
judges, by a vote which was 30,000 less than the State gave for Mh 
Bryan when he was there defeated by 90,000. Is not this action 
without due consideration % Is this not lightly and frivolously departj- 
ing from our form of government without being aware of it ? 

Here in your own State of Ohio a great deliberative body has just 
completed its task of revising your constitution. Before many days 
it will become the duty of your citizens to vote upon the adoption of 
no less than 42 important changes in your organic law. It is cause 
for congratulation that not all of them are radical or, as the New 
Nationalist calls it, "progressive." Nevertheless, among them are 




8 IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 

the initiative and the referendum, and there are others that tend to 
the subversion of the sound principles of our fathers. Is it not your 
patriotic duty to sift with care each of these proposed changes in your 
constitution and to place your disapproval upon all that even tend 
to the reactionary principles of the initiative, the referendum, and 
especially of the recall, whether of the elective and legislative officials 
or of the judiciary ? I call these doctrines reactionary because, not- 
withstanding the name "Progressive," given them by their advocates, 
they are essentially reactionary as distinguished from progressive. 
They all proceed from the complex, which is necessary in the present 
evolution and development of civilization, back to the simple, which 
may have been adequate in the early stages of civilization, when all 
the subjects of a law could gather together in one field and discuss 
its wisdom. 

What does the initiative mean? It means that a certain small 
percentage of voters can propose and cause a law to be placed upon 
the ballot. If it receives a majority vote it becomes operative 
forthwith without submission to the legislature; without deliberative 
discussion. It does not undergo the careful consideration of selected 
representative men, Members of not one but of two Houses of 
Congress, in order that it may be well considered and digested; in 
order that the people may be protected against their own errors or 
rashness. It is advanced on the false and absurd theory that every 
voter will acquaint himself with the provisions of each proposed law. 
Whereas we all know that few voters ever read even those laws that 
vitally affect their persons and their property. The law thus initiated 
can not be examined and corrected in committee. It must be taken 
or left precisely as this small percentage of voters have conceived and 
formulated it. It has been well said that it places the people who are 
to vote on it in the position of the witness who must answer "yes" 
or "no," the question: "Have you left off beating your mother-in- 
law?" It is far more vicious than the referendum, because it is 
intended to force a proposal for legislation upon the people at the 
demand of a very small number of persons which must be passed on 
without amendment; without any opportunity to perfect it even in 
phraseology; without any chance to duly reflect upon and consider 
it. It will remove the last inducement to bring able, reflective, and 
intelligent men to accept service in a legislative body. And, finally, 
it is not a policy which makes for stable and consistent government. 
To those of us who believe we must establish- our institutions of gov- 
ernment upon such stable foundations that they will not be subject to 
every wave of sentimental reform, every whim of opportunism, the 
suggestion of the initiative is utterly repugnant. 

The so-called referendum, while often mentioned in the same breath, 
differs widely from and has no relationship to the initiative. It is, in 
effect, a popular veto on the acts of the legislature and makes it 
possible for a small percentage of voters or for the legislature itself 
to require the submission to a vote of the people of a law passed by 
the legislature before it shall become operative. At once it appears 
how it may be made the means of obstructing the wheels of govern- 
ment when invoked by a small percentage of voters; how at once it 
affords an opportunity for the cowardly legislator to shirk respon- 
sibility by tacking a referendum to laws upon which he should be 
best qualified and courageous enough to decide. Both of these 



IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 9 

governmental measures would undermine the strength, the inde- 
pendence, and the power of the legislature. 

The very necessity for legislatures is called for in our form of gov- 
ernment in order that different views may be studied and compared; 
in order that acts may be considered and perfected by hearmg all 
parties and all interests ; in order that amendment and discussion may 
be possible; in order that in the light of history the results of such 
legislation may be considered and reflected upon. The initiative 
and the referendum do away with all of this, thus undermining one of 
the greatest benefits of representative government. In the well- 
known case of Barto v. Himrod, decided by the Court of Appeals of 
the State of New York more than 50 years ago, the court laid down 
the true doctrine in these words : 

The representatives of the people are the lawmakers and they are responsible to 
their constituents for their conduct in that capacity. By following the directions of 
the Constitution each member has an opportuty of proposing amendments. The 
general policy of the law as well as the fitness of its details is open to discussion. The 

?>opular feeling is expressed through their representatives; and the latter are en- 
ightened and influenced more or less by the discussion of the public press. 

A complicated system can only be perfected by a body composed of a limited num- 
ber, with power to make amendments and to enjoy the benefit of free discussion and 
consultation. This can never be accomplished with reference to such a system when 
submitted to a vote of the people. They must take the system proposed or nothing. 
They can adopt no amendments, however obvious may be their necessity * * * 
All the safeguards which the Constitution has provided are broken down and the 
members of the legislature are allowed to evade the responsibility which belongs to 
their office. * * * If this mode of legislation is permitted and becomea general, 
it will soon bring to a close the whole system of representative government which has 
been so justly our pride. The legislature will become an irresponsible cabal, too 
timid to assume the responsibility of lawgivers and with just wisdom enough to devise 
suitable schemes of imposture to mislead the people. 

All the checks against improvident legislation will be swept away and the charac- 
ter of the Constitution will be radically changed. 

The recall of elective and legislative officials is not a violation of 
the fundamental principle of representative government as are the 
initiative and referendum. Its tendency, however, would inevitably 
be to keep high-minded and independent men out of public life. It 
will make office seekers and officeholders instead of statesmen. It 
will make timorous and unprincipled trimmers instead of fearless 
lawmakers and executives. 

When, however, this principle of the recall is applied to the ju- 
diciary it becomes not only a stupid folly, but an outrage of the 
highest order. It is claimed that the judges are the servants of the 
people and that therefore the people should be able to terminate 
then* services at will. The judges are not and should never be the 
servants of the people in this sense. They are the protectors of the 
people and the guardians of their rights. They are and should be 
the servants only of the law. They are not set up to express their 
own personal opinions or those opinions which they conceive to be 
popular, but to construe the law as it exists. With reference to our 
fundamental law they stand to guard our Constitution and to see that 
the powers and duties which are granted the representatives of the 
people and placed in the hands of the Chief Magistrate and other ex- 
ecutives are exercised as provided by the Constitution and without over- 
stepping its bounds. There could be no more monstrous perversion of 
republican institutions and of the principles of true democracy than 
to make the actions or words of a judge the subject matter of popular 



10 IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 

revision by the suffrage of the people. If followed to its logical con- 
clusion the recall of judges would mean that the Nation would have 
no constitution and that questions would be decided not according to 
law, but according to the judges 7 interpretation of popular sentiment. 
'It makes of our Constitution a mere liquid thing so that a popular 
majority" may flood every branch of government and drown out 
with the momentary partisanship of that majority every guarantee 
and every check that our fathers put into the Constitution. The 
proposition strikes at the very heart of our representative plan of 
government, denying in effect the judicial department. It deprives 
the minority and so the individual of the protection of the courts 
against the tyranny of the majority. It paralyzes the independence 
of the judge, destroys his courage, and takes away every essential 
feature of his office. It assumes to the people, without conference 
or deliberation, the wisdom and judgment of the courts, and that 
without knowledge of the law or the facts. It gives disappointed 
litigants opportunity to destroy the just and upright judge. And 
it affords the^ssLcious agitator and noisy demagogue an opportunity 
to wreak vengeance upon the judge who denies their follies. 

The anarchist and the dynamiter understand what a splendid 
weapon for destruction it would place in their hands. While the 
McNamara brothers were being tried in California for the whole- 
sale murders which they later confessed, Eugene V. Debs, one of 
the chief apostles of anarchy and lawlessness, wrote an editorial in 
his paper, the Appeal to Reason, in relation to the California elec- 
tion then approaching, at which the recall of judges was adopted 
as an amendment to the constitution of that State. From that 
editorial I quote: 

The fight at the polls this fall will center around the adoption of the initiative, 
referendum, and recall amendments to the constitution. Under the provisions of 
the recall amendment the judges of the Supreme Court of California can be retired. 
These are men who will decide the fate of the kidnaped workers. Don't you see 
what it means, comrades, to have in the hands of an intelligent, militant working 
class the political power to recall the present capitalist judges and put on the bench 
our own men? Was there ever such an opportunity for effective work? No; not 
since socialism first raised its crimson banner on the shores of Morgan's country. 
The election for governor and State officers of California does not occur until 1914. 
But with the recall at our command we can put our own men in office without wait- 
ing for a regular election. 

Can any man of sincerity who is sane support such a public policy 
as this? 

Now, let us consider briefly, for our time does not permit of more, 
that Constitution under which we have advanced and expanded in 
a hundred years more rapidly- and more splendidly than any nation 
that has come upon the theater of this world. Although it may 
be read through aloud in 20 minutes, too few of us are as familiar 
with it as we should be. Perhaps no instrument known to history 
contains in such brief space so many momentous rules on a vast 
range of matters of the highest importance and complexity. It 
has been the admiration of the profoundest thinkers of the world. 
Few, if any, of the writings of the world, except the New Testa- 
ment, have engaged the time or attention of mankind as the Ameri- 
can Constitution, in weighing, discussing, and analyzing its text. 
Historians and students agree that its makers brought to its mak- 
ing a knowledge of the theory and practical workings of govern- 



IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 11 

ment such as has accompanied the formulation of no other similar 
document in the history of the world before or since. In compar- 
ing it to the unwritten constitution of the British, Gladstone said : 
' ' The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck 
off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." 

The men who brought their intellects together for its forming were 
well prepared through reading and reflection and practical experience 
for the huge task before them and their writings and public discus- 
sions show that they fully realized the vast significance of the great 
work they had undertaken to achieve; that they had deeply consid- 
ered the histories of other peoples from the beginnings of recorded 
history and knew their forms of government; that they were familiar 
with the story of Greece, of Rome, of Venice, of Florence, of medieval 
Europe, and that they had distinguished those principles of govern- 
ment that had proved weak and inefficient from those that had fos- 
tered the growth of freemen and the advance of civilization under 
law. With the wisdom born of this knowledge and after months of 
deliberation and discussion, they delivered to the American people a 
representative republic. A republic wherein representatives chosen 
by the people should, under rules carefully limiting their powers and 
jealously guarding the rights of the minority and of the individual 
against the usurpations and tyranny of the majority, make their laws 
and administer their affairs. A republic wherein the ambitious exec- 
utive, seeking to override the laws and usurp powers not granted 
him by the people, was halted on the one hand by the Congress and 
on the other by the Supreme Court. A republic wherein the rights 
of the minority and of every individual citizen, however humble, are 
safely guarded against a tyrannous majority or a dictator President 
by a court whose voice is supreme. 

They considered and avoided a social democracy wherein the 
people vote on and the majority decide, without possibility of real 
deliberation, all questions of government, changing, as passion or 
momentary whim dictates, their fundamental law. How is it possible 
for one hundred million people, half informed or misinformed and 
more than semi-ignorant, to deliberate ? Not even in Athens, whose 
enlightenment has been the glory of all ages, could the pure democ- 
racy survive. There acts of government were had directly by the 
people, just as it is proposed we shall now do by the initiative, the 
referendum, and the recall. In Athens the people assembled en 
masse and deliberated on and discussed proposed laws, with the most 
notable orators of history to expound them. But there were only 
30 ; 000 of the Athenian voters and they all in one city, as against 
our scattered millions. Furthermore, the Athenians excluded from 
the suffrage the slaves and the ignorant; and yet even in Athens 
the initiative, the referendum, and recall democracy failed utterly. 
Again and again the majority, in the heat and inconsideration of 
partisanship, swept aside with tyranny and revolution the rights of 
the minority and the individual citizen. Aristotle himself has pointed 
out to us how the democracy became a despotism and our own great 
Calhoun showed us in his day the menace to our Government of the 
uncontrolled numerical majority, declaring it to be nothing less than 
the absolute and despotic form of popular government, just as the 
uncontrolled will of one man is monarchy. Without control of the 
majority there can be no liberty in a republic. It would not be in 



12 IS OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPERILED. 

our day as difficult a matter in any part of the civilized world for a 
majority to become despotic as for a monarch to become a tyrant. 
Can we not see, without straining the imagination, a despotic majority 
in Congress led by some ambitious President sweeping aside decisions 
of our Supreme Court that were the only restraint upon that leader's 
ambitions and usurpation of power ? Have we any more reason to 
suppose that those who seek to accomplish their will concerning the 
political and social questions of our day are more sincere in their 
convictions than were those who in other times and in other lands 
have stained the earth with the blood of countless thousands in the 
conflicts between religions and sects, between races and classes of 
men, or that they are more sincere than those who in more recent 
times have by appeal to arms kept the constitutional Republics of 
Central and South America in a state of almost perpetual revolution. 
The appeal to prejudice and passion and hatred finds its natural 
sequence in appeals to force and in destruction of order. That you 
may see it is no idle dream of danger that we are considering, I will 
read to you an almost prophetic utterance of Abraham Lincoln. 
Speaking in 1837 to a gathering of young Americans at his home, 
he said: 

P All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined * * * could not by force 
take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge. * * * 

At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, If it 
ever reaches us it must spring up amongst us; it can not come from abroad. If destruc- 
tion be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and its finisher. As a nation of free- 
men we must live through all time or die by suicide. 

I hope I am overwary; but if I am not, there is even now something of ill omen 
amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country — 
the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passion in lieu of the sober 
judgment of courts and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of 
justice. * * * 

I know the American people are much attached to their Government; I know they 
would suffer much for its sake; I know they would endure evils long and patiently 
before they would ever think of exchanging it for another; yet, notwithstanding all 
this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure 
in their persons and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, 
the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; 
and to that, sooner or later, it must come. * * * 

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws let me not be understood 
as saying there are no bad laws or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which 
no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing, but I do mean to 
say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, 
while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously 
observed. * * * There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob 
law. * * * But it may be asked, "Why suppose danger to our political institu- 
tions?" * * * We hope there is no sufficient reason. We hope that all danger 
may be overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise would itself be 
extremely dangerous. There are now, and will hereafter be, many causes, dangerous 
in their tendency, which have not existed heretofore, and which are not too insig- 
nificant to merit attention. That our Government should be maintained in its 
original form, from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It 
had many props to support it during that period, which are now decayed and crum- 
bled away. * * * Then all that sought celebrity and fame and distinction 
expected to find them in the success of that experiment. Their all was staked upon 
it; their destiny was inseparably linked with it. * * * If they succeeded, they 
were immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties and cities and 
rivers and mountains and to be revered and sung, toasted through all time. If they 
failed, they were to be called knaves and fools, and fanatics of a fleeting hour; then 
to sink and be forgotten. They succeeded. The experiment is successful, and 
thousands have won their deathless names in making it so. But the game is 
caught. * * * This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appro- 



IS OITE BEPBESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IMPEEILED. 13 

priated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny 
what the history of the world tells us is true to suppose that men of ambition and 
talents will not continue to spring up among us. And when they do, they will 
naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion as others have done before them. 
The question then is, Can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining 
an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it can not. Many great 
and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever 
be found whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a guber- 
natorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion or the 
tribe of the eagle. "What! Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a 
Csesar, or a Napoleon? Never. Towering genius despises a beaten path. It seeks 
regions heretofore unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to story upon 
the monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory 
enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any pred- 
ecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and if possible 
it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen. 
Is it unreasonable, then, to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, 
coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time 
spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be 
united with each other, attached to the Government and laws, and generally intelli- 
gent, to frustrate his designs. Distinction will be his paramount object, and although 
he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet that 
opportunity being passed and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he 
would set boldly to the task of pulling down. 

Since the adoption of! this Constitution a phenomenal growth has 
extended our dominion from sea to sea and to the islands of the seas, 
and our population has increased to its present vast numbers. We 
have passed through changing conditions and crises which could not 
have been contemplated or even conceived by the framers of our 
Constitution, and yet within its brief rules have been found provisions 
to successfully meet every condition that has confronted our Govern- 
ment; every change that has come to us. Instead of obstructing, it 
has moved arm in arm with progress. No expansion has been too 
rapid; no development has been too wide or too complex to be ade- 
quately provided for within its covers. Do we desire to retain the 
advantages of the Government thus so successfully established by 
our fathers ? Do we wish to maintain and strengthen those advan- 
tages? Let us then jealously guard its distinctive characteristics. 
Let us actively and intelligently oppose the tendency toward their 
elimination and the reversion to the types that have been rejected 
wherever tried. Thus, and thus only, can we transmit unimpaired 
to those that come after us our priceless heritage of civil and political 
liberty. 

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